The Prairie Heart Institute and the Prairie Heart Foundation are partnering with a local family to meet life-saving equipment needs across Central and Southern Illinois.

The McGraw Family from the Rochester area says their family and the Rochester Junior High Baseball Team witnessed a tragic event when a local community member suffered a cardiac arrest during a baseball practice. Although 9-1-1 was called, the individual did not survive. Members of the McGraw family and Prairie Heart say that an Automated External Defibrillator or AED could have made a difference that day on the field. Brandy Grove, manager of philanthropy for the Prairie Heart Foundation, says a new program has been started to provide AEDs to area organizations to prevent more tragedies from happening.

Grove says that they hope to award 22 machines to organizations in their service territory this year.